I'm 23 and I've spent my whole life watching straight porn (I've been addicted for the past 5 years or so actually). I'm male and would focus on the male around 80% of the time. I spent most of those years believing I was 100% straight and only recently had what you may call a 'gay epiphany'. For me I believe my porn use was my brains way of disgusing my homosexuality until a time at which it felt able to deal with the fact I was gay. I don't display any of the stereotypical gay traits one might expect and despite living close to a large modern city I grew up with minimal to no exposure to the LBGT community. I was in no way homophobic but my brain simply couldn't even contemplate that being gay was a possibility for me. Questioning whether I was gay would have been the equivalent of questioning whether I had two heads. Ridiculous in hind sight of course. It took years for my consciousness to break down the walls of this convenient world of heterosexuality my brain had created. I feel however, that these walls would have had far less resistance if it were not for pornography. Perhaps I'm wrong but I literally feel there are multi milion pound studios out there intentionally tapping into the confused desires of men just like me. What I would like to know is has anyone out there had any similar experiences with porn use? And how did you deal with the added complexity it may have added when realising that you were in fact gay?
This sounds very understandable. Media in general doesn't actually destroy brain cells, but it does suppress our need to imagine. When masturbating with pornography there is no need to think critically and question what it is about the videos that we are consuming is arousing to us. What exactly it means to be aroused by those things? There is no better time to discover your interests and your sexual identity than this moment. I would start by putting a fair amount of effort into gradually minimizing the amount of pornography that you consume. It doesn't mean that you can't use outside forms of stimuli when masturbating, only that you make sure that you aren't forming any sort of dependence in the process. Making an effort to fantasize about sexual activity more often than watching it explicitly will definitely help you become more aware of the things that you are actually interest in and the types of individuals that attract you.
Thanks for the reply Gen, I can really relate to that first paragraph. I think you're spot on. And I think your second paragraph is also spot on. Brilliant advice. Unfortunately it's advice I've been giving myself for months since my gay 'epiphany' and (in relation to abstaining from porn) for the best part of 2 years before my 'gay epiphany'. Pornography has been my only form of sexual expression for 23 years and the addiction is too deep routed to brush aside. It's something which I believe requires professional assitance - something which I am now looking into.
Well, I am happy to hear that you are working on overcoming that. Sex, porn, masturbation, etc, sexual addictions are extremely common and probably a few of the easiest addictions to acquire. Fortunately, overcoming them isn't about cutting them out completely, rather learning how to gain a bit more control over our urges. Good luck with everything!
I had similar feelings en route to my bisexual feelings. I started watching porn, and just like you, would mostly focus on the guy. Id mask it by waiting for, and later skipping to, blowjobs. I thought "hey, all guys must like this. It's always in porn." After a while, I started to be more honest with myself, especially when I only wanted to watch BJs. Then when I wanted to give them. It took a few years, but I finally admitted I liked it. And after seeking therapy, I realozed I'm bi. I'm actually still working on it, but I definitky get what you're saying and want to you to know you're not alone. Porn helped me figure it out too
I've been addicted to porn for the past 7 years. Even so, not once did I question if I was gay or not (I watched gay/lesbian/straight porn), until last year when I broke up with my first girlfriend, it made met think that maybe I'm gay. I've had crushes on girls on my life and so not once did I feel out of place with any of my friends. It's clear to me at this point that the reason why I'll watch gay porn that only had older men in it with a big body was because it was something that I desired myself. Of course, being exposed to it for so long has desensitized my mind, so even gay porn is arousing and does not cause any discomfort (except for real life experiences, something that I also discovered). So porn, in fact, helped me realize that I wasn't gay because of how it felt in reality and how uncomfortable I felt. In addition, I never had feelings for guys, I always saw them as friends. You know, the ones where you can make fun of them 24/7 and it would be all for laughs.
